CITY MOVES WHO’S SWITCHING JOBS November 17, 2009 Neptune Investment ManagementThe fund management boutique has appointed Robert Pickering, the former chief executive of blue-blooded bank JP Morgan Cazenove, to its board of directors. Pickering qualified as a solicitor with Allen & Overy in 1984 and joined Cazenove the following year. He spent a total of 23 years with the firm and was appointed [...]
Amount of repossessions is set to go up November 12, 2009 FEWER homes will be repossessed this year than previously forecast, the Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML) said yesterday, but the body expects 2010 to see more repossessions. The CML lowered its forecast for the second time this year and now anticipates that 48,000 homes will be repossessed in 2009, just 8,000 more than in 2008. [...]
CML: breakup of banks won’t lead to more lending November 10, 2009 MORTGAGE lenders have warned that the government’s banks breakup will fail to stimulate lending and even predict “stagnation” in the housing market next year. The Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML) poured cold water on hopes that the carve up of RBS and Lloyds and the resurrection of brands like Williams & Glyn’s and Trustee Savings [...]
CBA reports strong markets November 8, 2009 Commonwealth Bank of Australia, the nation’s second-biggest lender, reported a strong first-quarter profit last night with business improving across the board, sending its shares sharply higher. CBA, also Australia’s largest mortgage lender, said in a trading update that cash net profit was about A$1.4bn (£0.77bn) as home-loan growth and stronger equity markets drove earnings.
US banking failures top 120 for the year November 8, 2009 United Commercial Bank, a big San Francisco bank with branches in China, was closed by state regulators this weekend and its operations were acquired by East West Bancorp, also active in both nations. East West said the transaction made it the second-largest independent bank in California. Based in Pasadena, East West has 137 US branches, [...]
QE has worked it’s time to wind it down November 5, 2009 IT is nonsense to believe that quantitative easing has had no effect on the economy. It has prevented a collapse in the money supply, which would have triggered a collapse in output. It has also led to a surge in asset prices and started to fuel new bubbles in Britain and abroad, which is why [...]
Northern Rock unveils surge in mortgage loans November 4, 2009 NORTHERN Rock saw improved trading in the third quarter, with encouraging trends on bad loans, and forecast a “significant improvement” in the second half of the year. But the state-owned lender, which is being split into two in readiness for a sale, warned that conditions in the mortgage and housing markets remained subdued. “House price [...]
GMAC posts third-quarter loss on its mortgage loans after housing crash November 4, 2009 GMAC Financial Services, a US lender that has received $12.5bn ($7.54bn) in government assistance, posted a third straight quarterly loss yesterday as its mortgage business continues to reel from the housing market collapse. The third-quarter net loss for Detroit-based GMAC was $767m, compared with a loss of $2.5bn a year earlier. GMAC’s auto finance unit [...]
Wimpey set to hike house prices in 2010 November 4, 2009 HOUSEBUILDER Taylor Wimpey is set to hike its house prices next year after yesterday reporting it had sold all the homes it targeted for 2009. The group said the average selling price for private homes has already jumped nine per cent higher in the 12 weeks to 4 November than the £177,670 it reported in [...]
UBS unveils another loss amid reshape November 3, 2009 SWISS bank UBS has reported a third quarter loss of SFr564.4m (£337m) after being hit by a hike in accounting charges. The result means the bank has now suffered four successive quarters of losses as it restructures in the face of the credit crunch. UBS, Switzerland’s largest bank, has been particularly badly hit by the [...]